“You remember me?” Lana asked, her voice trembling.
Nora nodded. “You had chickenpox. You were supposed to come too.”
Lana sat beside her, stunned. “They told me no one would remember,” Nora whispered. “That no one would come.”
“Who told you that?” Lana asked gently.
ra looked out the window, then back. “We never made it to Morning Lake.”
The next days were a blur of investigation and revelation. Forensics found no remains in the bus, but unearthed a photo wedged behind a panel: a group of children standing in front of a boarded-up building, their faces blank. In the shadows behind them, a tall, bearded man.
Nora, still fragile but lucid, recalled fragments: the bus driver wasn’t their usual one. There was a man waiting at a fork in the road. “He said the lake wasn’t ready for us yet. That we’d have to wait.” She remembered waking in a barn with covered windows and clocks that always said Tuesday, even when it wasn’t. They were given new names. “Some of the others forgot about home,” she said. “But I didn’t. I never did.”
